Pushing the Envelope Blog

The federal government ships a considerable number of packages each year, primarily using FedEx and UPS. In fiscal year 2012, federal agencies spent almost $337 million on shipping services through General Services Administration (GSA) contracts. The U.S. Postal Service earned only $4.8 million of that revenue, or less than 2 percent, a recent Office of Inspector General audit report found.

The U.S. Postal Service adds more than 600,000 new delivery points each year, mostly in the form of new residential homes. While most new residences include cluster boxes rather than to-the-door delivery to reduce costs, delivery remains the Postal Service's largest cost center. Canada Post, which has suffered losses recently after years of profits, has introduced a $200 per address charge that it is assessing housing developers for installing community mailboxes. Canada Post claims the charge “is in keeping with how other infrastructure costs are shared by utilities and other services." Canada Post, which adds almost 200,000 new addresses a year, could earn tens of millions of dollars from the fee and it would offset the added costs of new delivery points.

Powerful forces like globalization and the digital revolution are changing how, when, and where things are produced, purchased, and delivered. Look at how our shopping habits have changed in just the past few years. With your smartphone or tablet you can shop anytime, anyplace. Offshore production trends are reversing, and some manufacturing jobs are returning to the United States. And major urban areas continue to grow and link into a global transportation supergrid that connects people, commerce, and ideas. If you’re left off the grid, you could find yourself disconnected from the new global economy.

Imagine if customers didn’t have to wait at home for a package delivery or have to rush home from work to retrieve a package off their front porch. Or, what if they could avoid paying a fee to receive packages at another address? With 24-hour parcel lockers, their prayers are answered.

Last spring, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled gopost™, a self-service parcel locker system. The Postal Service is pilot-testing the 24-hour secured locker systems in the Washington, DC, area at locations such as shopping centers, grocery stores, pharmacies, and transportation hubs. Many gopost locker systems are accessible 24-hours a day, have a security camera, touch screen operations, and they provide mailing receipts.

The U.S. Postal Service is a key player in a year-long trial of a unique public-private partnership effort that would let citizens securely and voluntarily sign up for online services at multiple agencies using a number of different digital identities. The user would then use whichever password and identity is most convenient – whether the identities are issued by the government or a private company – to log in across multiple government agencies. As the most trusted government agency, and with a 200-year history of security and privacy in delivering mail, the Administration tapped the Postal Service to manage the technology behind the Federal Cloud Credentialing Exchange (FCCX) pilot project.

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Recent Blog Comments

Dear USPS,
I had an opportunity to try your automated postal service Kiosk for the first time.
I am an engineer / scientist and so these type of systems interest me.
I thought I would pass along my experience, in the event you...

Orange, Texas needs supervision!! They hire contract people for delivery of my mail but I never receive anything on time it shows for delivery. You contact Orange, Texas Post Office answer I always get is "we have 40 people delivering mail...